A novel New York bill allowing the state to oversee private union disputes while the NLRB lacks a quorum heralds legal battles over a decades-old doctrine that reserves labor-relations authority to the federal government.
New York lawmakers this week backed an increasingly popular argument that the federal National Labor Relations Board’s exclusive jurisdiction over labor matters doesn’t apply after President Donald Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox and stripped the board of the quorum it needs to fully function. The NLRB’s power stems from the US Supreme Court’s 1959 decision in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, which held that the National Labor Relations Act preempts state or local labor regulation.
“This is uncharted territory,” Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs said. “If the federal government is going to shut down, then states have to step into the gap. The answer can’t be, ‘Well, we’re not going to do anything because in the future, the president will solve the quorum problem.’”
If signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), New York’s bill and similar proposals in California and Massachusetts would prompt a wave of litigation forcing federal courts to clarify whether Garmon requires a functional NLRB, labor law scholars predicted. And as Trump inches closer to filling the NLRB’s three vacancies, the resumption of a quorum...
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